FBI arrests Anonymous hackers

The Feds have arrested over a dozen hackers in America all allegedly linked to the cyber-attacking Anonymous group, which, assuming the FBI has the right people, slightly damages their claims to be ‘anonymous’.

The cyber-attackers, of course, have been responsible for various Distributed Denial Of Service and other hacking attacks against the servers of companies and organisations which they perceive to be infringing freedom of speech or, more commonly, which they accuse of a heavy handed approach to protecting their intellectual property rights. The latter means various music and entertainment companies have been targets, most notably Sony Corp, whose entire PlayStation and Qriocity networks were forced offline.

According to reports, somewhere between fourteen and sixteen hackers were arrested during raids in New Jersey, New York, California and Florida. It follows arrests in Spain and one here in the UK against people accused of participating in cyber-attack campaigns organised by Anonymous, or similar organisations.

Earlier this week, one UK-based group of hack-attackers, LulzSec, resurrected themselves from a self-inflicted retirement in order to attack the websites of News International, presumably after wondering why nt other hackers had gone after such an obvious target since the phone hacking scandal blew up.

You get the impression the cyber-attackers think what they do is funny, as well as making some sort of political point. Though nothing any cyber-attacker has ever done is as amusing as this online protest, enabled by simply registering a URL that looks like it might belong to the Rupert Murdoch organisation: www.foxnewsuk.com. You have to read the source code to get full enjoyment.